This blog is a great opportunity to share ideas about ways to
transform schooling as we know it, to help all students realise their
talents, passions and dreams. Be great to hear from anyone out there! Feel free to add a comment to Bruce's Blog and enter e-mail to receive postings

The Conversation: Why 1904 Testing Methods Should Not Be Used for Today’s Students“Testing is compromising the future of many of our able students.
Today’s testing comes at the expense of validity (strong prediction of future
success), equity (ensuring that members of various groups have an equal shot),
and common sense in identifying those students who think deeply and
reflectively rather than those who are good at answering shallow
multiple-choice questions.”

“Instead of coming immediately to the teacher, we want students to
experiment on their own. Many of us wonder why students constantly do the
opposite instead. I've got news for you. It's our fault. We, as educators, are
often responsible for learned helplessness, and we have a responsibility to
change it! How can we empower our students to be self-directed learners?”

“Recently some critiques have emerged. Of
course we invite critical analysis and feedback, as it helps all of us learn
and improve, but some of the recent commentary seems to point to
misunderstandings of growth mindset research and practice. This article
summarizes some common confusions and offers some reflections.”

“In order to reach diverse learners, we need diverse teaching
strategies. Student voice and choice lie at the foundation of a differentiated
classroom. When voice and choice are honored, the one-size-fits-all model
transforms into multiple pathways for student growth.”

“We can deepen our own and our students’ understanding of mistakes,
which are not all created equal, and are not always desirable. After all, our
ability to manage and learn from mistakes is not fixed. We can improve it.”

The Global Search for Education: Just Imagine
– Tony Wagner and Ted Dintersmith

“The Global Search for Education consistently focuses on how to
better prepare students for the21st century — an age which will be all about
innovating and building. Today, we’ve invited education expert Tony Wagner and
entrepreneur and filmmaker Ted Dintersmith to imagine the school of the
future.”

Museum Asks
Visitors to Put Down Cameras and Pick Up Pencils and Sketch Pads

“Rijksmuseum,
the Netherlands national museum dedicated to arts and history in Amsterdam,
recently launched a new campaign called “The Big Draw.” It’s an
effort to get museum visitors toditch cameras and simple snapshots in favor of
drawing the artworks in order to more fully appreciate the easy-to-miss detailsThe tagline of the campaign is “You See More When You Draw,””

In trying to wrap
our hands around learning about learning, we need to understand how to
personalize learning by focusing on the learner first.This article discusses
three “space

One size doesn't fit all

invaders” that take up the space as teaching, performance and
work instead of what they should be focusing on: LEARNING.

“When you see
learners noticing and reflecting on their learning during their learning, that
is the Wow of learning. This is the higher-order thinking skills we want our
children to adopt: learning about learning and thinking about learning. This
makes learning visible.”

“It is not a
matter of teachers becoming superhuman and overcoming all horrible conditions
and indignities trying to succeed in doing what is virtually impossible,
especially in a sustained way. The students need their teachers to stay engaged
and fight for them. When the conditions of teaching are bad, the conditions of
learning tend to be worse, and children suffer in lasting ways. That's why the
collateral damage of burned-out teachers is burned-up children.”

“The illusion
of making progress in education, the continuous re-evaluating, revising, and
reorganizing of educational principles and practices, and the use of flawed
data to direct our course of action, are all part of a grand illusion that is
producing much “confusion, inefficiency, and demoralization.””

“There are many, including myself, who
believe we are now entering a new age of creativity- some even call it a
'second Renaissance'. If this is so then many of our current organisations,
with their genesis in an industrial age, will need dramatic transformation, as
will, more importantly our mindsets. We will need new minds for a new
millennium.We will need to create networks of creative schools so as to to be
in the forefront of such exciting changes. To achieve this schools, and their
communities, need to stop and think about what is required of education in such
exciting and very unpredictable times. Traditional education just won't do.”

“It is my belief that focused school
visits ( hence the need for a guide) are the most powerful means to gain
professional development and, in particular, to gain insights in to what other
schools/teachers feel important. This is all the more necessary as schools
are increasingly under pressure to distort their teaching programmes by the
need to respond to the reactionary and politically inspired introduction
of National Standards.”

Friday, November 20, 2015

The fear of all sums: how teachers can help students with maths anxiety

“The way teachers feel about the subject also has an impact – if we
think maths is hard and scary our class will too. Instead of taking shortcuts,
teachers must help children see the relationship between the different
challenges to ease their anxiety.”

“From a cognitive constructivist perspective, learning is achieved
through the twin processes of assimilation and accommodation. The latter
implies that new learning is 'bolted onto', or constructed within, existing
cognitive structures known as schemas. Learning relies on the individual
construction of reality, according to Jean Piaget. Such construction of
meaning is unique to each individual, and therefore centres on each learner's
efforts to make sense of the subject.”

“When parents have high hopes for their children's academic
achievement, the children tend to do better in school, unless those hopes are
unrealistic, in which case the children may not perform well in school,
according to research published by the American Psychological Association.”

Art and the Mind’s Eye: How Drawing Trains You to See the World More
Clearly and to Live with a Deeper Sense of Presence

Self portrait by John Ruskin

An excellent reason to include drawing in your
class programme.

“Drawing, indeed, transforms the secret passageway between the eye
and the heart into a two-way street — while we are wired to miss the vast
majority of what goes on around us, learning to draw rewires us to see the
world differently, to love it more intimately by attending to and coming to
cherish its previously invisible details.”

“It appears apparent to anyone who has worked in education for more
than a few years that what we have before us is a never-ending avalanche of
policies. Further, dedicated and committed teachers try their best to follow
instructions. They try to follow the latest round of “to-do” lists
hurled upon them from above by “experts” and policy makers.

“Standardization
is destroying the soul of creativity in our students. My subject area is about
reading and writing, something a majority of my students hate doing. This is
tragic because they’re both activities that I love deeply and most young kids
enjoy. Older students often tell me that they loved reading and writing when
they were younger, but they hate it now.”

“Our goal was
to create an educational model in which students' passions are the driving
force, empowering them as global citizens. While we have limited time to cover
required curriculum, we are committed to finding ways of embedding curriculum
in "real-life" applications within the project.”

“Human brains
are hardwired to understand the world through stories. This is so true that
psychologists often refer to stories as "psychologically privileged,"
meaning that our memory treats them differently from other types of information
(Willingham). Each of us is a collage of our unique life experiences. By organizing
these experiences into a story structure, we try to create order from chaos.”

“Discussions
of learning tend to focus on what happens in schools, but many students are
learning lots of important skills outside of school through extracurriculars
like sports, music, art, politics or any other passion. Often students don’t
get recognition for the learning they pursue on their own, and many times they
don’t even see their passion as learning at all.”

Bruce wrote this after a visit to my
school…sadly all this has now gone due to the switch after my departure to
‘raise achievement’ against ‘national standards’ based on the collection of

‘achievement data.’

“A plan for a school to develop a unit of
work which values students' ideas and thoughts and then challenges them to
'change their minds' though interactive activities. Before starting the unit
the staff need to clarify their idea of 'constructivist' and inquiry learning.”

Creative ‘mavericks’ are our only
hope – but times are difficult for creative thinkers in our standardised
education system.

“Does your school benefit from the
talents and energy of the 'maverick' or does it seek to restrain them?.New
Zealand was settled by courageous creative Polynesian and European adventurers
prepared to risk all for success in an unknown world. Not for then complying to
bureaucrats sitting at their desks or self interested populist politicians.It
was anthropologist Margaret Mead who said that every new idea was started by a
small group of committed people. Or as Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, 'Every reform
was once a private opinion.”

Tuesday, November 17, 2015

Someone once told me I am always captured by the last book I
have read.

Paul Mason

There is some truth in this. I also can’t resist ordering
books I have heard reviewed on National Radio that capture my interest. One
such book was Paul Mason’s ‘Post capitalism – a Guide to Our Future ‘- the
author was interviewed by Kim Hill.

The ideas in the book certainly have impressed me and all I
will be able to do will share, best I can, some of his ideas. I really enjoyed the
historical development of the relationship between labour and power and, in
particular, the dramatic rise of socialism and capitalism.

Well worth a read. It was referenced by speakers at the
recent NZ Labour Party Conference which I recently attended.

The book is premised by the belief that ‘for the developed
world the best of capitalism is behind us, and for the rest it will be over in
our lifetime’.

‘What started in 2008 as an economic crisis morphed into a
social crisis, leading to mass unrest’. There are two ways it can end. In the
first scenario, the global elite clings on’ but with stagnating

Escaping the neo liberal box

growth and
growing inequality.

In the second scenario, as ordinary people refuse to pay the
price, a variant of what happened in 1930s could emerge.

In both scenarios, the serious impact of climate change, demographic aging, mass migration and growing debt will combine to create chaos
by 2050.

Mason proposes an
alternative, we ditch neo -liberalism; then we save the planet – and rescue
ourselves from inequality – by moving beyond capitalism. There is a growing
consensus as to how you do it: suppress high finance, reverse austerity, invest
in green energy and promote high waged work. But, as Greece found out, any
government that defies austerity will clash with the global institutions that
protect the 1%..

The route to a new future beyond capitalism has been created by technology (
just as the printing press provided the impetus to create the Renaissance). Modern technology, through automation, has
reduced the need for labour to produce goods. Secondly information technology corrodes the markets
ability form prices correctly - - consider the ease of downloading music from
the internet. Thirdly there is the rise of collaborative production –
Wikipedia, the biggest information product in the world is free as is the rise
the ‘creative commons’.

Networked world

'A networked world', Mason believes ‘offers an escape route’ and this ‘must be driven by a change in our thinking about technology, ownership and work itself’.

‘In the old socialist project the state takes over the
market, runs it in favour of the poor instead of the rich, then moves key areas
of production out of the market and into a planned economy’. This has been
tried but it hasn’t worked.

The state’s future role is to create the framework for change. ‘The new information technology has created
a new agent for change; the educated and connected human being. Revolutions in
highly complex information driven society will look very different from the
revolutions of the 20th century.’

The challenge of the future is between the availability of
free and abundant goods (with minimal labour input) and a system of
monopolies, banks and governments trying to keep things private, scarce and
commercial. ‘Everything comes down to the struggle between the network and the
hierarchy, between old forms of society molded around capitalism and new forms
of society that prefigure what comes next’.

The power elites and the financial institutions have a lot
at stake. The idea of TINA (there is no alternative) is now under attack. ‘Millions
of people are beginning to realize they’ve been sold a dream that they can
never live’. There is no ‘trickle down’; growing inequalities are a feature of capitalist societies

In his book Mason writes that in the decades
after WW2 prosperity was the result of state ownership and
control. It was an era that resulted in technological changes and the spreading
of best practices. This came to a halt with the oil shocks of the 70s and with
President Nixon removing the gold standard for the dollar.

This was the beginning of neo-liberalism – Thatcher, Reagan
and in New Zealand ‘Rogernomics resulting in the dis empowerment of worker
unions and the rise of business elites and corporate domination.

Mason’s book is premised on the concept of cycles of
political change in power structures; neo-liberalism is coming to end.

It is Mason's belief that the new information technology, rather
than creating a new and stable form of capitalism, is dissolving it; corroding
market mechanisms, eroding property rights and destroying the old relationships
between wages, work and profit.

Recommends Mason's book

More radically it is leading us
towards a post capitalist economy; a move as great as when the financial
merchant families replaced the power of the feudal monarchs' ; a change that will
redefine the nature of work itself as automation takes effect.

This automation will
result in making human labour largely redundant resulting, for many, more free time than work time leading to the problem of what to do with the millions of people
whose jobs are automated? In this process work will lose its centrality as part of a person’s
identity. Networked individuals will increasing become a power for change.

Transitions are always hard to understand as the plot of
Downton

Changing times in an earlier era

Abbey illustrates. The question is how will humans have to change in
order for post capitalism to emerge?

Four time bombs Mason writes will create the press for change – all are
interrelated an all will require dramatic action.

Peace talks 1939

The first is climate change – the result of ‘free market’
capitalist economic growth -primarily caused by the use of carbon fossil fuels to fuel
economic growth. Strong positive action focusing on renewable energy will help
but, as Mason writes, ‘more and more the climate talks…come to resemble the
peace treaties that paved the way for the Second World War’.

The aging problem

The second time bomb is the demographic problem of aging, potentially as big a threat as climate change but with a more immediate
economic impact. Fewer and fewer workers
will be available to pay pensions and the care of an aging population. This is an irreversible change
added to by falling birth rates.

The demands of
spending on pensions, health and care will create devastating problems of
public debt.

The fourth time bomb is the impact of mass migration
resulting from poverty. Mason predicts that we have not seen anything compared to what is to come. 'Either poor countries will become richer
or poor people will migrate to richer countries.’

Notwithstanding all these problems, even following the GFC
of 2008, the ‘financial aristocracy is determined to go on living as if the
threats outlined above are not real,’ believing that market forces will solve
all problems. Those in power will do whatever they can to avoid real
transformational change that requires the end of neo-liberalism and the
development of a post capitalistic world. The illusions, bred over the last twenty-five
years, feed our paralysis – the illusion that everything is
going to be OK.

This false sense of security, echoing the feelings prior to
the outbreak of World War Two, will eventually require dramatic action.

Only states and states acting together can organize positive actions –
responding to the challenges that lie ahead will require more state ownership
and will require more planning than anybody currently expects..

Mason’s book provides an antidote to despair. For all the
rhetoric about free markets, the capitalist system will not provide any answers
and, rather, will contribute the problems..

The theme of Mason’s book is that technology is developing a
world that requires fewer workers and introduces the idea of a transition to a
world without work driven by information technology able to produce goods
almost for free; a challenge to profit orientated capitalism. In the future people will be
involved in providing services beyond the market – for example free information
through Wikipedia or the creative commons.

In his final chapter Mason outlines what a post capitalist
society might involve. He calls it Project Zero as its aims are a zero- carbon
energy systems; the productions of machines, products and services with zero
marginal costs; and the reduction of labour time as close as possible to zero.

This is not about returning to deadening state control but rather will require a state foresight and guidance rather than command and
control; networks rather than hierarchies.

Mason outlines five
principles.

The 1 %

Test all proposals on a small scale before attempting them
on a larger scale.

Design transitions to ecological sustainability, responding
to problems as they emerge.

This transition will not be just about economics but will require the emergence of new kinds of people that will be created created by the growth of networked
communities. The growing cohorts of networked citizens will have different
perceptions from their parents or grandparents.

The fourth principle will be to attack all problems from all
angles. The rise of networked
citizens allows them to organise meaningful spontaneous actions as powerful
agents of change beyond the control of governments, political parties and corporations.
New forms of democracy will need to evolve allowing solutions to be found
through a mix of small scale
experiments that, if shown successful, can be scaled up through top down
action.

The fifth principal for a successful transition is to
maximize the power of information. Already aggregated data about our lives is
available too often controlled by governments or corporations.

There will be a need to
create democratic control over aggregated information to prevent its misuse by states and corporations. Once information has been 'socialised' it will have the
power to amplify the results of collective action by mapping problems and
providing immediate assistance.

In Mason’s scenario decision making is decentralised; the
structures needed to deliver it emerge

during the delivery; targets evolve in
response to real-time information – and all actions should e modelled through
simulations tools before enacted for real. ‘The best method is for small groups
to pick a task, work on it for a bit, document what they’ve done and move on.’

Top level aims of a post capitalist project would be:

Rapidly reduce carbon emissions -work towards

sustainability

Stabilize and socialize the finance system to take into
account problems of aging, climate change and debt.

Deliver high levels of material prosperity and well-being by
facing up to inequalities in society.

Gear technology towards the reduction of necessary work –
eventually work becomes voluntary with the rapid transition towards an
automated society.

Such changes will require a ‘new spirit’ – a new attitude to
replace the current misplaced faith in ‘market forces’ which is unable to solve current
problems.

Mason’s solutions provide his best guesses and is open to be
changed by the wisdom of others.

‘The most challenging arena for action is the state; we need
to think positively about its role in the transition to post capitalism.’ ‘The
state has to see itself as one of nurturing new economic forms to the point
where they take off.’ Currently the state, under neo-liberalism, has been
deregulated to allow marketization, corporatisation and privatisation in such
areas as education and health. ‘The state has to reshape markets to favour
sustainable, collaborative and socially just outcomes. ’Local energy systems
could be incentivised and infrastructures developed to allow local innovation. The
state has to ‘own’ the agenda for responses to the challenges of climate
change, demographic aging, energy security and migration’.

Governments will have to do something clear and progressive about
debts – in countries that are unable to repay debts they could be written off.

Collaborative business models need to be fostered. The tax
system needs to be reshaped to reward the creation of non-profits and
collaborative productions.

Large
corporations need to be controlled by regulation. This might sound harsh but
similar restrictions outlawed slavery and child labour despite protests of
factory bosses and plantation owners.

New minds required

Monopolies to be be outlawed. ‘For twenty
five years’, Mason writes, ‘ the public sector has been forced to outsize and
break itself into pieces; now would come the turn of such monopolies such as
Apple and Google’.

‘Public ownership delivered in the past huge social benefits
and in the post capitalist society it would deliver that and more.’

Public
provision of water, energy, housing, transport, telecoms infrastructure and
education would feel like a revolution as these have been privatised under
‘market forces’ for the benefit of a few.

'A mix of government encouraged initiatives and highly
regulated corporations would create the framework of the next economic
system, not its substance.’ ‘There is no reason to abolish markets by diktat,
as long as you abolish the basic power imbalances that the term ‘free market’
disguises.’ Innovation and creatitivity would be rewarded. Patents and intellectual
property rights would be designed to taper away. State funded research should
be free and shared.

‘The only sector where it is imperative to suppress market
forces completely is wholesale energy. To meet climate change with urgent
action the state should take ownership and control of the energy distribution
grid, plus all big carbon suppliers of energy. Renewable sources of energy need to be subsidized. Mason believes in' decentralizing and allowing local communities to keep the
efficiency gains they make’.

The neo-liberal position

The next big piece of social technology would be focused on the financial system. Central nationalized banks should have sustainability
targets. Other banks would need to be restructured to reward innovation and to
be penalised for speculative rent seeking loans.

The biggest structural change to make post capitalism possible is to establish a state guaranteed universal basic income.The purpose of a basic income is to formalize the separation of work and wages and to subsidize the transition to a shorter working week, or day, or life.

The idea is simple: everybody of working age gets an
unconditional basic income from the state funded by taxation, and this replaces
the unemployment benefit. Other forms of need-based

welfare would still exist topping up the basic income.

This move would radically accelerate technological progress.
One study states that 47% of all jobs in an advanced economy will be redundant
due to automation – this would result in an enormous unemployment problem. A
basic income paid out of taxes gives people a chance to build a life in a non
–market economy allowing individuals to involve themselves in work or non-work
activities.

.

The fiscal cost for this would be high costing, according to
UK figures, twice the current welfare bill.. This would be affordable if
current tax exemptions were abolished combined with cost saving changes to
other public spending.

‘Under this system there would be no stigma attached to not
working. The universal basic income would be an antidote
to the low paying service jobs that capitalism has created over the past
twenty-five years that pay little and demean the worker.

‘As we pursue these goals, a general pattern is likely to
emerge; the transition to post capitalism is going to be driven by surprise
discoveries made by groups of people working in teams’. ‘This is not going to
be a controlled process. The most valuable thing that networks can do ( and
individuals within them) is to disrupt everything above.’

Asking what is the end state is not the wrong question
according to Mason. Post capitalism is a ‘beginning state’.

As the reproduction
cost of labour shrinks dramatically the employment problems that have defined
human history will shrink or disappear. ‘So instead of looking for an end
state, it’s more important to ask how we might ... escape a
dead end.’

We are entering an era when the labour that is necessary to
sustain life falls and free time grows – where the division between work and
free time is blurred.

Mason concludes his book writing, ‘we are at a moment of
possibility; of a controlled transition beyond the free market, beyond carbon,
beyond compulsory work.What happens to the state? It probably gets less
powerful over time- and in the end its

function are assumed by society.’

‘What happens to the 1%?

Their ideology tells them their
uniqueness has made them successful but their success depends on a
plentiful supply of cheap labour and repressed democracy – where inequality is
rising. 'To live in a world so separate, dominated by the myth of uniqueness but
in reality so uniform, constantly worrying you’re going to lose it all, is- I
am not kidding, tough.’

‘But there is good news. The 99% are coming to the rescue.
Post capitalism will set you free.’

Not an easy book to summarise. Best you read it for yourself

Mason is asking readers to imagine a more socially just and
sustainable society beyond capitalism – a world we can help shape rather than
simply react to problems that face us .

“Technology alone will not make it happen. Indeed, the technology
will achieve little unless the ecology of learning and the purpose of
technology have been clearly established. It’s about culture, imagination,
creativity, risk-taking, failure, learning, questioning and the amplification
of this entire process – especially the innovation piece – through the
appropriate use of tools and technologies that help extend our ambition and
learning outcomes. It’s about how we use those things.”

If you don’t know much about John Dewey, here’s
your homework - research him!

“Dewey wrote much about the power and importance of experiential
learning (learning by doing,outdoor education, hands-on experiences), and how
the teacher should be more of a facilitator or guide in a child’s learning
experiences rather than the “sage on the stage”, which sadly became the
traditional approach.”

An important topic, given the ever increasing
eyes of the state on our every day activities, and there’s no reason to think
that education will be spared from this.

“In the
educational domain we see a lot of normalisation of designing computers so that
their users can’t override them. For example, school supplied laptops can be
designed so that educators can monitor what their users are doing. If a school
board loses control of their own security or they have bad employees, there’s
nothing students can do. They are completely helpless because their machines
are designed to prevent them from doing anything.”

’It is time to go back to basics of teaching and learning, not those
of the 3 R’s, or of rote learning, of the industrial revolution or that of the
information technology revolution but instead the basics of relationships and
trust in education. It is time to rethink our pedagogy. A time to wipe the
slate clean and rethink things from the beginning and not keep adding things
that we think will or should“work”.’

“I come across
weary, disillusioned teachers on a daily basis in the course of my visits to
schools as an author. Now here’s the rub, not one of these good professionals
references the very real stresses and strains of the classroom as the factor
that could drive them out of teaching. It always boils down to workload, the
endless collection of data, the subordination of teaching and learning to
tracking, testing and "accountability", which invariably means
stress-inducing targets and anxious over-the-shoulder concerns about the next
Ofsted inspection.”

“This exercise
will build your skills in recognising how communications can activate
unproductive cultural models. It’s an essential first step in keeping your
messages from being eaten by dominant understandings of your issue.”

Survival of the fittest or the best
connected - Market Forces or creating conditions for all to thrive. A new look
at Darwin.

“Competition it is still
believed leads to innovation but when you look at innovation from a long term
perspective competition turns out to be less central that we have been led to
believe. Survival of the fittest has been oversold - from a long term
perspective openness and connectivity may be more important.”

And:

“Shame is that our current market
forces competitive orientated government seems prepared to destroy such an
environment by introducing competitive league tables which will destroy the
valuable aspects of collaboration and connectivity and, in the process, narrow
the curriculum as teachers will naturally begin to teach to the test - a
version of the outdated ideas of ' survival of the fittest.”

“A vision gives an organization a sense
of direction, a purpose, but only if it is ‘owned’ and translated into action
by all involved.But vision is not enough in itself. The values that any
organization has are just as important or even more so because they determine
the behaviours that people agree to live within. Alignment of people behind
values is vital but too often both vision and values are just words hidden in
folders are rarely referred to. What you do must reflect what you believe if
there is to be integrity. And any alignment needs to include students and
parents as well.”

Losing our grip: More students
entering school without fine motor skills

This problem has appeared in New
Zealand schools as well, and I suspect the same will the case all over.

“Local teachers and occupational
therapists say an increasing number of children are showing up for kindergarten
without the fine motor skills needed to grip a marker, hold their paper still
while coloring or cut and glue shapes.”

“By allowing children space and time
to play they will show you what they know, what they are capable of, and what
they want to learn about. Through play they explore and express their ideas,
interests, and passions — but you need to listen to these carefully to know
what to pick up on.”

“How can we foster a love for
life-long learning when, before the tooth fairy has even collected a full set
of gnashers, children are expected to get down and give their teacher 20? It is
bad enough that their final year of primary school is riddled with a strict
diet of test, drill, repeat twice every half term for the entire year. But to
re-introduce yet more testing for children who can barely get themselves
dressed, is a regression.”

“The author of the His Dark Materials
trilogy urged the government to make theatre visits for schools “a firmly established part of the
curriculum”, saying he was concerned about falling numbers of children being
taken to plays and concerts.

“I
do worry what happens to children when they’re deprived of these things by
these blasted league tables and this crazy assumption that we’ve got to test
everything,” he said.”

Like it or not, schools are being
converted into academies – that’s anti-democratic

‘Academies’ is an English term for
charter schools. Readers all over will appreciate the points made here.

Parents against academies!

“Resistance against “forced” conversion is not a new
phenomenon. The Anti Academies Alliance contains a catalogue of conversions of
local authority-run schools into academies that were bitterly opposed by
governors and parents. Many within education and outside of it are opposed to
the highly politicised nature of conversions and the lack of evidence that these
conversions are in the best interests of the students.”

“Riverpoint
Academy in Spokane, WA is an innovative public high school to say the least.
Students

Riverpoint High School

are given autonomy to pursue the projects that they are most
passionate about and create real-world solutions to problems by incorporating
the latest technology into a collaborative learning environment that is fueled
by community professionals and an inspiring staff.”

“Over the
weekend, President Obama declared that "our kids should only take tests
that are worth taking." But what would such tests look like? I have a few
ideas. Here is my Affirmative Testing Manifesto:”

“Unfortunately
our public schools are far too focused on indoctrination than education, on
repetition over discovery. Our educational system specializes in creating
trivia masters and kids that hate school, instead of building a new generation
of creative problem solvers that love to learn and explore new approaches
instead of defending status conferred based on mastery of current truths (which
may be tomorrow’s fallacies). We are far too obsessed with STEM (Science
Technology Engineering and Math) when we should be focused on STEAM (Science
Technology Engineering Art and Music.”

“The arts have
a powerful impact on learning and are important in their own right. Here are
ten reasons why, in a 21st century world, we should strengthen and expand arts
education, not reduce or eliminate it.”

“Today there is an understanding of the
relationship between socio economic background and school achievement and the
cultural background of students. Ability grouping is unfair if it doesn’t take
into account young people’s prior experiences and opportunities to learn.”

“If teachers want to develop personalised
learning environment students need to have developed the habit of working
independently. Self managing is a 'key competency' both for the smooth running
of a inquiry based classroom and to develop vital life long learning
capabilities. As such it is highly related to future success. When students are
'self managing' it allows teachers the time to work with students who need
help. What independent learning attributes do students in your class exhibit?”